The Bodine Collection – Chronicling Farmall History!
What can you say about a day spent spanning a collection of over 300 Farmall tractors, literature and memorabilia and more? The Bodine collection is amazing. The family is an 8th generation farming family. With the grandkids, it is a 9th generation farm!
The Bodine’s farm is located in Guntersville, Alabama. After meeting Randy Bodine at the Gateway Farm Toy Show in St. Louis, I jumped when he extended an invitation to check out his family farm and collection.
Post Flywheelers
The Elliotts, Kent, Jane and their daughter Beth were our traveling companions to the Florida Flywheelers. The first segment of the Bodine collection stop was in Opelika, Alabama. The stop was Bodine Landscape Service, Randy and Jana Bodine’s business. Both, Randy and his brother Robert have landscape businesses. Randy’s is in Opelika, near Auburn where he went to college.
The Opelika collection!
In Opelika, we lika it! Sorry, I couldn’t resist! We saw tractors and memorabilia. We learned the story of the Bodine family farm.
The Bodine’s started farming 188 years ago. They have their own family cemetery that has a historical marker! In the cemetery they have markers from the War of 1812, Civil War, WWI, WWII, and the Korean War.
The Bodines’ grew cotton and it was Randy, Robert and their sister Glenese’s grandfather that transitioned farming with mules to tractors. Read about this in an upcoming issue of Red Power magazine. Once the family transitioned and funds allowed, they added an implement to the tractor and left it attached. This made it so the tractor never had to be changed out and was always ready to go.
Memorabilia and more!
At Opelika we saw some amazing Farmall memorabilia. Randy is the Farmall memorabilia king. He has such a cool collection, watch for an article in Classic Farm and Tractors. We saw tractors, truck and a bit of everything at Opelika. But, the neatest of all was an experimental cotton picker on a Farmall B. This came from the Hopson Plantation. Randy hopes to restore this with a grant down the road.
Guntersville
The Bodine farm backs up to Guntersville Lake. The acreage was once part of the Bodine farm. Randy said the land for the lake was acquired when the Tennessee Valley Authority built the 69,000 acre lake. It was completed in 1939.
Robert lives on in the 1904 family homestead. On the farm they used to raise cotton. Today the farm is in CRP. A look around would make you think they raise Farmalls!
Saving Farmall History
Randy said they were preserving Farmall history one piece at a time. After visiting their collection, I believe this is true. The Bodine Collection is a gem, a true reflection of a family that cares about their history, and the International Harvester story!
